This week's topic: Swamped by complaints that the creek path and civic area are overrun with transients, City Council directed police to resume enforcing Boulder's camping ban. Your take?

One of the best things about having children is how it forces you to appreciate the simple wonders you took for granted and question the challenges of the world anew.

This summer, my preschool-aged twins and I biked from south Boulder around town, mostly to the civic area, a whopping 800 miles all told. Our regular route takes us on the Broadway path down toward Boulder High and along the creek. My kids ask me about the putrid smells and the plumes of pot smoke, why is that man sleeping on the grass, why our stuff got stolen at the library. I come up with the best answers I can about why they have no home.

We've traveled three times to developing countries. For some reason, questions about hardships were easier to answer there. But in our hometown, the homogeneity of wealth and the homeless are sharply juxtaposed.

Children come with a blank slate of innocence. It's our job to fill that slate with values and beliefs to accompany their experiences. Kids know when your words don't match your actions or body language. If I feel fear for our safety, they do too. When I show compassion, that gets programmed into their moral fabric. The same is true with its sinister foe, disgust.

City Council, please let compassion, not disgust, and concern for their and our safety guide you through this complex issue. Boulder's children will be watching and learning from you.

Perhaps still smarting from failing to rid his neighborhood of beer pong tables, Shoemaker wants to export to someone else's neighborhood a problem the City Council in part encouraged to grow to historic proportions. That's his "fix"?

Shoemaker's "out of sight, out of mind," non-solution would simply move the drug use, public defecating, violence and vagrancy — he hopes — out of the civic center into the outskirts where, frankly, City Council members visit only during something like their "tragical mystery tour" bus trip scouting suitable sites for a homeless, transient and travelers' (HTTs) encampment. One site they ogled was a parcel of land the city owns at 63rd Street and Spine Road in Gunbarrel. "Suitable," in this case, means on the city's very edge.

Thankfully, council's elder statesman, Matt Appelbaum, is speaking common sense about the issue, perhaps because of his long tenure dealing with it. Essentially, "Build it and they will come."

HTTs come to Boulder because of the lenient treatment and generous services. That the City Council has finally decided to find a permanent day shelter instead of creating a tent city in the boonies, and suggesting the police enforce the laws more strictly, are two steps in the right direction.

It is unconstitutional abuse to criminalize sleeping. The only thing wrong about people not having housing is that many of these people would like to have housing but face systemic obstacles. Those who do not face these obstacles are also human. Being "homeless by choice" is not threatening; harassment is.

This town has a tendency to punish appropriate behavior because some people equate it with a sometimes-but-not-often-correlated behavior. It's frustrating to fear someone misusing a public space. It's not OK for people, whether they have housing or not, to harass passersby! Harassers need to be held accountable.

How can we make most people here feel safe? For those who feel fear, does it come from real threatening experiences or does it come from assumptions formed from a biased society?

For those who cause fear, mandatory workshops on the above topics make more sense than criminal records. Sleeping should not be criminalized, while harassment and assault should be taken seriously. The organizations supporting people without housing need more support so that their clients can get what they need. If people's needs are met, they'll seldom harass, though some people might need to be re-socialized. I hope we can find somewhere for all people who want to be in our community, and I hope they both act and are treated respectfully.

"If you build it, he will come," is a line from the movie "Field of Dreams," where the protagonist builds a cornfield baseball diamond and the Black Sox show up for a game.

Out of concern for their fellow human beings, many citizens of Boulder have worked to provide services for the homeless. We have three separate organizations, a number of churches, and local government all working for the homeless. But our services have attracted vagrants from all over the country who know Boulder doesn't enforce its camping ban, and has free food, and clothing. As a result, we have been inundated by dirtbags.

Enough.

We need to define types of homelessness and then decide which classes of homelessness we must serve, which classes we will try to serve, and which classes we will ask to leave town.

We must assist our own homeless. That means Colorado residents, folks who can prove their connection to the community, e.g., driver's license, bank or credit card records, utility bills, etc. They have been part of our community and we can and should lend them a helping hand.

We are not heartless. People hear about Boulder, pack up the kids and meager possessions in a car and come here looking for a new life. After we have helped our own citizens, we can try to help these folks. But the vagrants who litter our creek and parks? We have built services for homeless, not vagrants. Enforce our camping ban.

Today's bumper stickers urge us to "Coexist." Yesterday's pleaded to "Keep Boulder Weird." I haven't yet seen one that says "Keep Boulder Cruel." Perhaps we should print some.

Because cruel, legally speaking, is what council has mandated we be. The Ninth Circuit — the highest federal court to examine public sleeping bans — ruled them to be "cruel and unusual punishment," violating the Eighth Amendment. That's the part of our Constitution outlawing torture. We're ignoring it.

The court wrote that humans must either sleep or die. If we forbid a homeless man from sleeping in public when there aren't enough beds, then we forcibly inflict sleep deprivation on him — not for his acts, but for his status of being homeless. The court found this unconstitutionally cruel. The Justice Department agrees.

Homelessness is surging nationwide, caused by worsening income inequality, a force as global and pernicious as climate change. Criminalizing its symptoms is as useless as outlawing wildfires. The last time the police enforced the sleeping ban, homeless folks asked: Where can we sleep, if not in Boulder? Cops reportedly recommended camping near Nederland. We've lately seen how that works out.

What we need is humane mitigation. In most respects, council is working hard on this. But banning public sleeping without sufficient alternative shelter violates our Constitution — and it should violate our conscience. Forced sleep deprivation was one of the Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation techniques" after 9/11. Is that the legal company we choose to keep?

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